


Gather the Chicks

by Solrika



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Bastion taking care of all the little ones, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 08:40:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8482825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solrika/pseuds/Solrika
Summary: Bastion looks at Overwatch, and finds it wanting. Who's taking care of all these kids?





	

 

Bastion looks at the group of humans who call themselves Overwatch, and isn’t sure she approves.

“They’re sending shinies to fight,” she complains to Zenyatta one night, gesturing towards the younger squad members. 

“It’s their choice,” Zenyatta says, but she knows him well enough by now to read his own unease. 

“They shouldn’t _have_ to choose,” she retorts, gun whirring in agitation. She ignores how it makes the older soldiers tense–serves them right, for pulling little shinies into their fight. “I know humans didn’t care about us, but you’d think they’d treat their own better.” 

Zenyatta shrugs helplessly, and she softens a bit–he’s a shiny himself, after all, only a few years old. “Well,” she continues, swiveling her head so her targeting systems are no longer fixed on him, “I suppose I’ll just have to do my best to keep you all safe.”

It’s harder than it seems: the shinies are faster, and in some cases fliers, and all so stubborn and headstrong. It’s admirable, but also frustrating–they’re… she searches for the human word… they’re just children, just _babies_ , and already Hana has faced a terror-walker and Lucio has staged a revolution. Jesse’s as rootless as those tumbleweeds he talks about so much. Lena has fallen through time, a concept Bastion’s processor can hardly parse. Genji’s very structural integrity has been shot to pieces and remolded, and Zenyatta’s lost his batch-mate. Winston is the only one of his model on the planet. It’s not _fair_.

 And most infuriating, there are old soldiers pulling them back into a fight that should have been finished long ago. 

Bastion snarls at 76, sometimes, even though she knows he doesn’t understand her scolding. She wishes she could push Ana to hold Fareehah and make her apologize for all the years spent apart. (Bastion knows humans abandon their creations like they throw away trash–biological, omnic, it doesn’t matter to them. She still shivers with rage every time.) She wants to shake Reinhardt for bringing along Brigette with tales of glory when battle is anything but. 

Bastion does her best. 

She lets Winston explain science to her, and makes sure to encourage him out of the lab to play with Lena. It’s harder without language, but gentle hand-tugs seem to do the trick.

She finds quiet places for Zenyatta to meditate. 

She helps Brigette take care of Reinhardt’s suit, and shoos the big man away when it’s clear the shiny needs to take a break. 

When she can, she’ll take Lucio into the closest approximation to wilds she can locate, and they’ll watch frogs sunning themselves on the edges of ponds. He likes to sing along with her, and while it’s unrefined, sometimes he’ll tell her that it reminds him of making music with friends _before_. 

She helps Fareeha clean her Raptora suit, buffing it so it shines. Bastion might not understand why, but it always makes Fareeha smile, and that’s enough.

Hana is prickly, unwilling to admit weakness, but Bastion finds that she has a fondness for being carried. Whenever it looks like the shiny’s games aren’t doing the trick, Bastion will pluck her up and take her for a walk in the sunshine. Sometimes Hana talks. Sometimes she doesn’t. Rarely, she cries, and Bastion is as gentle as can be when she strokes the little one’s hair.

Genji and Jesse sometimes need to be pushed together, sometimes need to be forcibly separated. Every so often, when holding them both in the air by the scruffs, Bastion wishes for the long-deactivated Gabe they speak so fondly of. She’d welcome another helper. 

The memory of the war is always just a bullet-crack away. Sometimes she looks at the shinies and shudders, remembering her own young squadmates who never got a chance to survive a week, much less grow old. 

“Stay safe,” she tells them before each battle, even if Zenyatta and Genji are the only ones who can understand. “Fight well. Come back in one piece.”

She thinks, maybe, they understand her even without the direct translation. 

She hopes so.

She watches her shinies march out, so brave, so young, and by all that she holds dear–oh, she hopes so. 

.

(Every so often, she hears 76 mutter, “I don’t trust the omnic near the kids. It spends too much time with them.”

Bastion is always happy, in those cases, to show him that she’s learnt at least one human idiom: the middle finger.)


End file.
